Monday, October 19, 2009

Why would anyone run a full marathon when they can run a half?

I'll admit that all this marathon talk is getting to me a little bit. I hear all sorts of wonderful reports about the Nike Women's Marathon and I feel a little envious. I read blog entries by people who do marathons and they seem to at least get through them, often raving about how wonderful the experience was.

Then I look at the course map for a marathon, say the Seattle Marathon, and compare it to the half marathon. The half looks so much more interesting! Half marathons seem to take the best part of a race course and condense it into 13.1 miles. The accompanying marathons stretch that out by adding in all sorts of boring extra miles. And for some reason, the extra portion of the marathon course always looks so much longer than just another half marathon!

I just don't know.

In other topics, today I ran a slow recovery from my long run yesterday. Honestly, my legs were dead in the first mile! 11:10 minutes of dead. It took that long before I even got to the typical warm-up miles. After a few miles I finally settled in to some sub-10 easy miles. My splits for 8.71 miles—11:10, .53 miles at 10:29 pace, 10:25, 10:09, 9:48, 9:51, 9:47, 9:32, 9:16, and .18 mile at 10:16 pace.

The reason that last fraction of a mile was so slow was because I did a lot of jogging around in front of my house to bump the total up to 8.7. I had only intended to do my usual 8 (and really had barely enough time for that, especially at my slower-than-usual pace), but somewhere along the way it came to me that if I added my distance from yesterday's long run to today's run, I would be pretty darn close to 26.2....8.7 was what it took to make it up to the full 26.2. So, despite the peril of being late to work, or, worse, having to skip breakfast, I bumped up my morning distance to the full 8.7. (And I didn't miss breakfast....)

Runner Girl

I can fly, or I can run

I Am a Runner Girl

But now my task is smoothly done,I can fly, or I can runQuickly to the green earth’s end,. . .And from thence can soar as soonTo the corners of the moon.Mortals that would follow me,Love virtue, she alone is free.John Milton

About Me

Avid antique shopper and garden lover, runner, walker, skier, and yoga & pilates devotee. Frequent traveller to England. Voracious reader of literary fiction, travel memoirs, self-help books, mysteries, garden & decorating books, and a wide variety of magazines (Runner's World, Oprah, Prevention, More, Glamour, as well as stacks of gossip mags while at the Y). I also have a weakness for contemporary Brit-lit (Bridget Jones and sistren) and sweeping English sagas (e.g. Rosamunde Pilcher novels). English major in my former life. I love sweet peas, David Austin English roses, old houses, antique silver, china and glassware, the Cotswolds, chocolate, scones with jam & clotted cream, and Jane Austen novels. When I grow up (or in my next life) I would like to own a tea room and antiques shop, but for now I just visit as many as I can.